PHILADELPHIA – It’s not unusual for Doug Collins to send Jrue Holiday to the 76ers’ bench, in a clandestine fashion, at the start of the fourth quarter.

Give the guy credit. He’s trying to rest his point guard under the guise of a TV timeout.

In doing so Sunday, with Holiday off the floor, the Sixers committed two turnovers in as many possessions and allowed the Phoenix Suns to build an 11-point run. So there was Holiday, springing off the bench and poised to re-enter with 10:02 left in the fourth.

“I can only rest him a minute and eight seconds,” Collins said, with a giddy grin. “Tonight I had him out for (1:55 in the fourth quarter) and I had to bring him back. He ended up playing 39 minutes.”

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Holiday poured in a career-best 33 points, handed out 13 assists and scored the final three points of the Sixers’ 104-101 victory over the Suns at Wells Fargo Center, snapping a two-game skid.

Only two Sixers in the last 25 years have eclipsed 30 points and 13 assists. One is Holiday. The other was some guy named Iverson.

“When he’s not in the game, you definitely can feel it,” Thad Young said of Holiday. “The ball, it doesn’t move around a lot. Jrue is our distributor who’s going to get into the paint and make plays. Sometimes the offense gets stagnant without Jrue in there.”

That stagnant streak coincided with the Suns’ 11-0 run, which carried over from the third to the fourth quarter. This game that featured 16 lead changes, and five of them occurred in the fourth quarter – three with Holiday off the floor.

“This was one of those games where I kept looking at our coaches, saying, ‘We better keep scoring,’ because we weren’t stopping them,” Collins said.

So Collins sent Holiday back onto the floor in the fourth, and he never left. The Sixers were a plus-11 with Holiday in the game, a number that came in handy in the final minute.

Holiday’s 16-foot, pull-up jumper with 26 ticks left made it a three-point game, at 102-99, until the Suns’ Markieff Morris dropped in a layup. Holiday left the door open for the Suns, making one of two freebies at the other end to make it a 103-101 game. But the Suns’ Michael Beasley missed a 1-footer, Evan Turner pulled down the rebound and got it to Holiday, who with one of two free throws made it official.

Well, sort of.

The game clock didn’t start upon Phoenix inbounding the ball. Rather, it only began to click after a full-court heave from Jared Dudley. The officials reviewed the play and the game ended with a wave of the arms, not the clanging of a ball hitting the rim.

Odd way to go out, but the Sixers will take it.

“Coming down the stretch, we made the right plays,” said Holiday, who with five double-doubles is tied for second-most in the NBA, when it comes to the points-assists variety. “We had to come out and be sharp, and we were sharp.”

Turner finished a rebound shy of a double-double, with 16 points and nine boards. Lavoy Allen had 11 points and six rebounds and Thad Young shot 5-for-7 for 10 points for the Sixers (8-6), who host Dallas Tuesday night.

Phoenix entered the contest with the league’s worst defense against 3-pointers. So the Sixers fired away early, hitting their first two attempts from long range. Their hot string didn’t last long, though, as they missed nine of their next 12.

A see-saw second quarter went to the Sixers, who got a spot-up 3-pointer from Jason Richardson to send them into halftime with a 46-41 lead. Richardson played 34 minutes, showing no sign of a left ankle sprain from a night earlier.

The Sixers, who have allowed fewer points per game than anyone in the league, have had to rely on their defense in crunch time. This time, Holiday and the offense carried the load.

“He has a chip on his shoulder,” Young said of Holiday, “and that’s the way we like it when Jrue plays. He’s aggressive when he’s handling the ball, he’s making good decisions, finding himself shots.”

Turner and Holiday connected for a highlight-reel play midway through the third, when Turner pulled down a defensive rebound and then sent a baseball pass full-court to Holiday for an easy, uncontested lay-up.

Scorching the nets to the tune of 11-for-15 shooting at one stretch, Holiday seemed to have lost his scoring touch at one point in the fourth quarter. He clanged three consecutive attempts at crucial junctures, with Phoenix keeping the game within two possessions.